There have been several requests for something like this. gnome-core is intended to closely match what GNOME upstream considers to be core. Some people want to have more control over what apps are installed.
My initial thinking for a name for this metapackage is gnome-minimal. I'm not sure what this metapackage would look like. Would it be as simple as Depends: gnome-session, gdm3 (which will ensure that gnome-shell, gnome-control-center, and xdg-desktop-portal-gnome are installed)? Should it have Recommends on many GNOME Core apps? Which ones? I guess it should have Suggests for all the GNOME Core apps. apt will keep a suggested package installed if a package that had previously depended on it or recommend it no longer does that or is no longer installed. Thank you, Jeremy Bícha
